Oil and water : experiences of being Han in 21st century Korla, Xinjiang

Abstract

Oil and Water is a multidisciplinary investigation of Han settlers' experiences of life in PRC-era Korla, Xinjiang, based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork. Korla is the administrative centre for oil and gas exploitation in the Tarim Basin (South Xinjiang), has a 70% Han population, and is the fastest-developing urban region in Xinjiang. South Xinjiang is otherwise populated predominantly by Turkic Uyghurs. Designated an "All-China Civilised City," Korla is a socio-economic, political and aesthetic model. I present the Han in Xinjiang through a combination of photographic images, life histories, national histories and analyses of the social structures and institutions in which they live. Building on CW Mills' insight that "history, biography and social structure [are] the three coordinate points for the proper study" of men and women, I insist that vision must also be taken into account, in both its forms: the visual (images and aesthetics) and the prospective (imagination and aspiration). Visions of the future flourish in the imaginations of the frontier. The experience of being Han in Xinjiang encompasses many classic topics of Chinese sociology, such as "work units" (danwei {u5355}{u4F4D} ) and "connections" (guanxi {u5173}{u7CFB}), and is additionally inflected by Han settlers' roles as agents and objects of a "colonial endeavour," or "civilising project," on the spatial and cultural periphery of the PRC. The structure of this dissertation reflects this topical diversity. The first half focuses on the core of the Korla model-the Tarim Oil Company and its population{u00AC}and their effects on the surrounding space and society. I identify the Tarim Oil Company as a neo-danwei, a development of the socialist-era work unit form, created and enabled by the conditions of permanent market transition, ideological intermixture, and the perceived "behindness" of the frontier. Later chapters deal with Han guanxi networks and the marriage economy in Karla city, linking these informal structures of control and hierarchy to the formal structures of the local government and the state-dominated employment market. Other key aspects of being Han in Xinjiang include: the long-established loyalty-for-entitlement relationship with the central government; increasing intra-Han social stratification and competition; and the uncertainty about their place in contemporary China. My focus on Han people differentiates this study from the majority of works on contemporary Xinjiang, which tend to look at Uyghurs, the (Han-dominated) Chinese state, and the contention between them. In this study, Uyghur-state contention is seen from the point of view of Han society in Xinjiang, and is used to illuminate Han society-state relations. I find that Han people and institutions in Xinjiang leverage discourses of ethnic separatism and instability to attract resources from the central state. The assumed instability of the Uyghur population and the historical tensions associated with Chinese governance of the periphery makes stability among the Han of increasing concern to the central state.